Israeli MP: ‘Judaism is above democracy’

Last week, MP Yariv Levin, of Netanyahu’s radical Jewish Likud party introduced a controversial proposal to Israeli parliament (Knesset), which will grant Jewish identity priority over democracy in ruling which pertain to issue of religion and state, and also requiring illegal Jewish settlements be set-up in the Arab land (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights) occupied by Israel since 1967.

The proposed bill, which stated: “The land of Israel is the historical birthplace of the Jewish people and the place of the establishment of the State of Israel.”

The bill grants legal status to the Zionist myth “the land of Israel” and sole Jewish affinity to it for the first time, saying that the right to realize national self-definition is “unique to the Jewish people.”

The bill created a storm among opposition MPs on Monday, with Labor MP Avishay Braverman labeling the proposal a ‘disaster.’

“When David Ben-Gurion founded this country it was on the basis of two principles: Israel was to be a Jewish and a democratic state. Now they are trying to annex Judea and Samaria and erode the democratic state,” he said in statement reported by local press.

If adopted, the bill could potentially impact future court decisions surrounding an Israeli presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The region’s status is a key contentious issue in the ongoing John Kerry’s effort to bring Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to restart negotiation on Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Former Israeli cabinet minister, Shalamit Aloni, wrote in Ha’aretz (May 9, 2009): “Sadly, Israel is no longer democratic. There’s a state and no equality of rights. Democracy exists but only in the formal sense: There are parties and elections and a good judicial system. But there is also an omnipotent army that ignores legal decisions that restrict the theft of land and owned by people who have been living under occupation for the past 42 years. And since 1992, it means an ethnocracy in which gentiles (non-Jewish citizen) are considered donkeys.”

American Jewish investigative writer, Stephen Lendman, in an article, entitled Israeli Democracy or Hypocrisy wrote: “Throughout history, regimes rhetorically embraced democracy as cover for more despotic policies, no different today throughout the world in countries like India, Pakistan, America and Israel practicing what Michael Parenti calls “democracy for the few,” (the) “shadier sides of US political life (in which) proponents of the existing social order have tried to transform practically every deficiency into a strength.”

Canadian writer and blogger, Gregg Felton, in book ‘Exploding Middle East Myths’, exposes the real Israel: brutal treatment of Palestinians, blatant disregard for Christians and Muslims, and parasitic control over foreign governments, especially the US. Last year, Israeli-born author, writer and musician, Glad Atzmon, reviewed the book on Iran’s Press TV. Watch his debate with a British Zionist parrot, below.